Bay State cyclists describe myriad reasons to ride

A growing number of people mainly use a bike to get to work in Massachusetts – one key measure of the growth of cycling as a form of regular transportation. But by most accounts, this is only a fraction of all people who ride in the Bay State – some as activists, others just for short trips around town or leisu...

By David Riley

The Herald News, Fall River, MA

By David Riley

Posted May. 6, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated May 6, 2013 at 6:17 AM

By David Riley

Posted May. 6, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated May 6, 2013 at 6:17 AM

» Social News

Pedaling from his Newton Highlands home to his Boston office most weekdays, Jeff Linder starts his mornings zipping down a long hill into Brookline and watching the sun rise over Jamaica Pond as he crosses the city line.

“It’s just a great way to start your day,” he said recently, as he biked his usual route.

Linder, a doctor, has been cycling to his job at Brigham and Women’s Hospital since he moved to Brookline in 2000 and has continued from Newton since 2002. He’s one of a small, but growing number of people who mainly use a bike to get to work in Massachusetts – one key measure of the growth of cycling as a form of regular transportation.

By most accounts, this is only a fraction of all people who ride in the Bay State – some as activists, others just for short trips around town or leisurely rides, and still more as part of organized cycling clubs that ride for longer distances and at higher speeds.

Whatever their reasons for biking, many cyclists describe basic pleasures in traveling this way.

“I love the riding, just the dynamics of motion and the air – seeing and smelling,” said Peter Brooks, a longtime Watertown cyclist and member of the board of directors for the Charles River Wheelmen, a regional club with about 1,200 members. “That’s why bikers like it. It connects you to the environment intimately.”

Linder said riding is great exercise and keeps him fit, as well as a great alternative to traffic on his way into the city. Mostly, he said, it’s fun.

“A bike ride never seems like a waste of time to me,” he said.

Census data offers a few details about who bike commuters are. They represented only 0.7 percent of all Bay State commuters as of the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 American Community Survey, but that’s up from 0.4 percent as of the 2000 Census.

This seems to mirror a national trend – in the U.S., the number of bike commuters rose nearly 40 percent from 2005 to 2010, according to the League of American Bicyclists.

The Bay State ranked 15th highest in the country for commuting by bike in the 2012 Bicycling and Walking in the United States report, by the Alliance for Biking and Walking. The study placed Massachusetts behind states such as Oregon, Washington and California.

Most bike commuters are men – about 72 percent, according to the Bicycling and Walking report. This reflects a national gender disparity that some bike advocates have sought to address, highlighted by a national Women’s Cycling Forum in Washington, D.C., last March.

Many bike commuters are relatively young. Roughly half the estimated 50,600 people who use any means other than driving, public transit or walking to get to their jobs in Massachusetts – that includes cycling, but also cabs and other less common ways of traveling to work – are between the ages of 25 and 44, Census figures show.

Page 2 of 2 - However, people in the 45-to-54 bracket outnumbered those between 20 and 24, and adults of all ages were represented in the figures.

About three-quarters of this population is white, about 14 percent Hispanic or Latino, 7 percent African-American and 6 percent Asian, the Census figures showed.

Brooks said he commuted to and from work for about 45 years. “I could have the stress of working and ride home and by the time I got home, I left it all behind,” he said.

Others view cycling as a means of addressing public health, social justice or other issues that concern them.

Neil Leifer of Newton left a job as an environmental attorney to focus on working with children in low-income Boston neighborhoods to get involved in cycling and learn how to repair and maintain bikes. He volunteers with Boston nonprofit Bikes Not Bombs and said his career shift came as he tried to figure out how best to fight childhood obesity.

“Instead of suing Coke and Pepsi, I decided I would use my knowledge of exercise to see if I could contribute to that aspect of the problem,” he said. “It’s not more complicated than that.”

Charlotte Burger, a cyclist who commutes from Boston to Cambridge, said she views biking as a “tonic” for many of her concerns – economic, environmental, feminist and community-related.

“Some people say it’s little, and it is little,” she said of cycling. “But there are all sorts of things that are little, and when they add up, it can lead to big changes.”

The growth of cycling means the public’s image of who a typical bicyclist is – such as a fast-moving, “antisocial” bike messenger – is changing, said Steve Miller, executive director of the New England Healthy Weight Initiative at Harvard School of Public Health and a board member at the Livable Streets Alliance, where he writes a transit blog, “The Public Way.”

“Very few people think of that as true anymore,” he said. “We now understand that bicycles are us. We are all, or almost all, potential bicyclists.”

(David Riley can be reached at 508-626-4424 or driley@wickedlocal.com.)